TEC: Chapter 42: The Details

This chapter comprises barely two pages, and seems to be a response to the idea that…well, perhaps this terrorist attack wasn’t very well thought out.

Can’t imagine why anyone would think that!

So we learn that Asim and Najjar are our Moar Arabs. Much like Norm and Jim, they have the same job and background, and thus we learn nothing about what differentiates the from each other. Except that Asim will drive his bomb-containing truck to the middle of the bridge on the top level, and Najjar will do the same but on the bottom level.

Talon had convinced his Arab crew that this attack would dwarf 9/11 and would go down as one of the greatest single attacks in history.

Still not sure why two Arab terrorists (from Arabistan or some such place, I suppose) would take the word (or the orders) of a white South African, but whatever.

So, the two Moar Arabs are getting ready to disable their trucks at the middle of the bridge. They’re hoping the simultaneous detonations will destroy the bridge, though how that would help in the dispersal of the radiation, I don’t know. Still, though, it is a plan, right?

See, the thing about explosions is that they’re basically circular in footprint. You may have noticed this.

So these guys are taking a weapon where the primary purpose is to disperse radioactive material all around, and throwing away 90%+ of “all around” because it’ll just go into the Hudson – sure, not great for fish (are there any?) or boaters, but it’ll wash away soon enough without killing anybody.

And the bridge decks and structure can be washed down way more easily than stone or brick buildings.

Oh, right, I hadn’t realised but… with the cliché-o-mat turned up to 11 this has to be a suicide bombing, right? How are you going to coordinate two vehicles on different roads to meet at the exact right place at the right time? Isn’t there, like, traffic?

I thought for a moment I knew why they’d picked the GWB, but this book came out in 2005 and the bridge has only been the site of the world’s largest free-flying American flag since 2006.

Setting off a bomb on the road surface may damage that surface, but unless it’s effing huge it won’t affect the structural members. A few weeks or months of closure.

OK, here’s how I’d terrorise New York with two suicide R-bombers: put one at the NYSE as InquisitiveRaven suggested, which means you’re evacuating all of the southern tip of Manhattan, and the other ten minutes later at the biggest rail station in the area that people will be trying to evacuate through. Grand Central gets you Times Square as well. The panicked mobs will kill way more people than the bombs do.

Grand Central is already radioactive from the granite used in its construction. Setting off the second bomb in Penn Station also gets you Times Square, and it takes out several LIRR routes and the only Amtrak route through New York. Depending on where you put it, a bomb in Penn Station might also take out Madison Square Garden which is right above it.

I also like detonating one dirty bomb below the bridge. As in, with another layer of road covering it from above. How far do you think the radioactive debris will spread that way, hmm? Only the small amount ejected to the side will get anywhere. Specifically, in the river below.

Oh, and real smart planning to bring down the bridge. That’ll deposite all that radioactive material in the river, where most of it will be washed away by the river, into the ocean. A small cleanup of the riverbanks will suffice to deal with the problem.

I think the author only copy-pasted the wiki article on dirty bombs without reading it. He just knew they were something scarier than regular bombs that terrorists might do. So that’s what he decided to give his terrorists, without a second thought put into how you would logically use them. Hence why they’re trying to use their dirty bombs for demolition.

Oh, and good luck getting this attack to be bigger than 9/11. The bridge is 1450 meters long with 14 lanes (I know wikipedia too!). Assuming a grid lock along its entire length on all lanes, allowing about 10 meters per car, you could fit about 2000 cars on there. I don’t know what the average number of people per car is (or how many busses might be there to raise the average), but let’s assume 2 people per car. If you get that perfect, complete traffic jam along the entire length (maybe they can bribe Christie to do his thing again, but that’ll only get them 7 of the 14 lanes) and then have just about every single car drop into the water and no one managing to get out and swim away, you just about managed to top it.

Yeah, the Moar Arabs definitely didn’t think this through, and they seem to have two conflicting goals. If their goal is to destroy the GWB, they should have gotten more than two bombs, and not detonate them only in the middle of the bridge. If their goal is to spread radioactive material around, they should have picked a different location than a bridge, where a lot of that radioactive material will end up in the water.